Ok, so Powerslave is coming along nicely and I’m starting to feel pretty, what’s a good way to put this? Confident in my ability to turn random aggressive polygon monsters into low-resolution piles of pixelated goo.

So it threw me a tiny curveball.

According to the manual, there are three boss enemies, though I’m expecting a fourth just to spice things up.

The first boss character is in, well, an arena. In getting to him you go through a level that is clearly a funnel – you feel from the onset that you are being lead down a path to your doom, made even more obvious by being dropped into a large circular arena with a giant door on one wall – a door you have to OPEN to let the boss out. It all leads to a nice sense of tension.

Boss #2, on the other hand, is just sort of hanging out in a hallway in its level. There’s no buildup; you’re happily wandering through the level when you turn a corner and BAM.

The ensuing chaos was glorious, going from “huh. Haven’t seen one of those before” to ” huh. It kind of hurts and WOW it’s taking a lot of bullets to kill” to “uh, I’m running kind of low on ammo and close to death, is it ever going to stop and fall over?”